


Nepenthe

by LesbianGhost713



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, it's canon flying out the window, seriously main character is fucked up, what's that sound?, your heart will probably break several times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-08 20:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LesbianGhost713/pseuds/LesbianGhost713
Summary: Nepenthe (N)-something that induces a pleasurable sensation of forgetfulness, especially for pain or sorrowLocryn is quite literally losing his mind. He began losing pieces of himself after he was defeated by Frame of Mind, a hero went bad. He quit SHIELD and had been pleasantly losing his mind. That is until Fury showed up at his house and requested his assistance for a mission.Loki was banished to Midgard and stripped of his seidr. Thor brought him to SHIELD headquarters, against everyone's better judgment, where he locks himself in the room they provided and refuses to speak to anyone. Until Thor locks him and Locryn in the same room until Loki trusts someone again.Will Locryn get Loki to trust someone once more, or will the storm inside erupt leaving Locryn an empty shell of who he used to be?





	1. Kind of a prologue but not really

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first time I'm writing in third person so please bear with me. Also, it's my first time writing a Loki fanfic and "publishing" it. Please be aware that it is SUPER freeform. I'm still trying to follow the Marvel Universe's version, but it is still freeform. Please, please feel free to leave feedback on it.

The problem with the blood soaking through the heavy blanket wrapped tightly around the boy's arm was that it wasn't staying inside him. Instead, it seeped from the wound like sap bleeds from the tree.

Locryn Nancarrow was faintly aware of the hive of paramedics buzzing about him, readying him to be lifted onto the gurney. His head swam with images of what had just happened minutes ago. His body wouldn't cooperate. He could manage to move his right arm, but the other hung loosely at his side like an old man's flaccid penis.

Briar, his ex-girlfriend, and hero turned villain had set a trap for him and his team of heroes to be inside the building while Inferno set the first and second floors ablaze as Malware jammed any signal to all of the electronics, which had trapped them up on the fifth floor. The image changed to one of Ora screaming in agony as the flames consumed her wings. Garin had tried desperately to reach her, to heal her wings, only to be crushed by a falling beam. 

Locryn groaned and tried to roll over, but there were restraints around his chest, stomach, hips, and knees confining him to the gurney. One of the paramedics from the swarm gently pressed her hand against him to keep him lying down.

"Don't worry Hun, we'll have you fixed up in no time," she said as she smiled warmly. Another paramedic joined her at Locryn's side, a man with scruffy red hair. They whisper to each other before the woman smiles again. "All right, we're gonna lift you into the ambulance okay?"

No sooner did she finish the sentence did the gurney lift and jostle until they had it inside the small area of the ambulance. They buzzed around him again and he watched groggily until they arrived at the hospital. They shouted something as they got out and pulled the gurney out after them. Several blue shapes swirled about and wheeled him into a brightly lit room.

The nurses counted off before the sheet underneath Locryn lifted and rested on another bed, though this time it was an operating room. One of the nurses slipped a mask over his nose and mouth before his world went black and he was enveloped in the arms of the void.

******

Locryn opened his eyes to a familiar face in the chairs by his bed. Nuala dozed curled up in what looked like an uncomfortable position. He coughs as he turns his head towards her. His cough stirs her from her dreamless nap.

"Locryn, you're awake," she said while smiling in a sleepy manner before stretching.

"What happened?" he croaked.

"Your ex is what happened," she said. When he answers with a risen eyebrow, she sighs. "Frame of Mind lured us into a trap. One fatality, four injured pretty badly."

"Who was the fatality?"

"Garin. He was trying to save Ora," she said before going silent. 

Locryn chuckled sadly, "I guess I have a shit taste in girls, huh?"

Before she can answer, Nick Fury, director of SHIELD walked into the room. "Agent Nancarrow, how are you holding up?" His long coat fluttering as he stops at the foot of the bed.

"As well as can be expected, Sir," he said glancing at him. 

"How about that arm? Any ghost pains?" 

"Ghost pains?" Locryn tried to sit up only to find himself off balance. Glancing down he finally realizes why he couldn't move it.

His left arm was completely gone from the shoulder down.

"Your arm's tendons were sliced and there was no way to repair it, so the doctors decided to amputate to avoid further damage."

"Further damage? How can there be further damage? My arm is fucking gone!"

"Well suck it up buttercup, there's more work to do." Fury said.

Locryn stayed quiet for a moment, his mind reeling. "Director Fury, as soon as I'm well enough to leave, I'm going home and I respectfully ask that you leave me out of whatever business that may require my assistance"

"What are you saying, Kid?"

"I'm quitting SHIELD."


	2. Time for Exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki becomes homeless and Thor drags him away from his comfortable bed of boxes

"Do you not know the damage you have caused?" Odin's booming voice fills the room full of the people of Asgard. They all gathered to see the trial of Loki, god of mischief. There were shackles around his neck, wrists, and feet all connected by a chain around his waist held by two guards dressed head to toe in gold. He was flanked by eight more guards as if he were the most dangerous criminal to be in the palace.

"I am well aware of the damage," he responded almost bored. Of course, it was all an act. Loki was in fact, terrified of all the people who knew him as Prince Loki seeing him be led into the throne room bound in chains. He was terrified of their reactions when they learned of his siege on New York in Midgard. He was terrified of what Odin would do to him.

"Then do you not care?" He roared. Odin's armor flashed in the light as murmurs broke out among the crowd. 

Loki's heart rate increased as sweat broke out on his forehead. 

"Silence!" he barked before turning back to Loki. "I hereby declare that you are guilty of insubordination and banish you to Midgard and you will be stripped of your seidr."

"B-but-"

"My decision is final. You will be sent to Earth immediately," Odin interrupted and tapped his staff on the floor. Loki bowed his head as the guards pulled him towards Heimdall to be banished. The chains clanked one last time before he was released into the Bifrost to serve his sentence on Earth.

 

He almost landed on a cactus and judging by the look on his face, he was thanking the nine realms he didn't. 

When he stood up, and sand coated everything and he really started to reevaluate his decision to wear black leather. He dusted himself off. That old pisscouch, he thought as he scanned the horizon and spotted a small town. 

The sun beat down on his back and he began reevaluating his entire wardrobe. He sheds his jacket and vest and pretty much any armor he had on. He walked into the small town in a green tunic and skin-tight leather pants while carrying the jacket and his vest in his arms. 

Several small children wander by and stare as Loki enters the nearest gas station. He nods to the cashier before wandering over to the bottled beverages. He watches someone else pick out a bottle of soda and pay for it. He pulls out a gold coin and reaches for the bottled water. He grabs another and makes his way to the cashier.

After the humiliating moment of not having the right currency and her buying it for him, he wandered back out into the heat. Having nowhere else to go, he settles into the alley between a restaurant and a gym. 

******

It's been a few weeks since Loki arrived in the small town of Velia, Arizona. He has been living off of the generosity of a few of the Midgardians that lived there, mainly an old woman who he had yet to learn the name of. She wobbled down the street on her cane to what the town knows to be his alley carrying a bag full of groceries.

"Feylo, get up," she says as she nudges him with her cane. He groans in response and rolls over mumbling about needing his beauty sleep. "Feylo, you sleepy boy, get up."

His eyes flutter open and he turns to glance at her. He grunts as he sits up. "Good morning to you too, Woman-Who-Feeds-Me-And-Refuses-To-Tell-Me-Her-Name," he quipped.

She smiles a toothy grin in response. Slowly, she sets the bag down in front of him and sits in the lawn chair she left with him waiting patiently to watch him open the bag as if he were a child at his birthday party.

He rolls his eyes and begins taking the food out of the bag. For almost two weeks, she's come by every day with a bag for him full of food for the day. Sometimes all snacks, other times tv dinners. Today, she brought him frozen waffles, a gallon of orange juice, a package of Oreos, and two tv dinners for lunch and dinner. He smiles up at the old woman in gratitude.

"By the way, there is a young man looking for you," she mentions as she wobbles back towards her house.

A young man? he thinks to himself. Who would that be? No one on Midgard even knows I'm here besides these people. And they don't seem to know who I am

To answer his question, his brother wandered up the street. His crimson cape fluttering behind him heroically as the sun bounces off his armor. Loki groans and rolls over to avoid being seen by his oaf of a brother. The last thing he needed was for Thor to drag him off to gods knows where.

Unfortunately, that didn't work and Thor recognized him instantly. 

"Brother, I have found you at last," he announced rather loudly which made Loki flinch. He bounds over as if he were a puppy seeing his owner after a long day of being alone. "I have been searching for you since Father told me that you were banished here. And then my witch friend tracked you with a spell."

"You found me. Good for you, do you want a trophy?" Loki grumbled as he sat up and leaned against the wall.

"Brother, I have come to take you back to New York with me, so that you can become a hero too."

"And if I'm happy right here?" Loki asked.

"You are truly happy with eating cheap Midgardian food from an old woman and sleeping in an alley?" Thor scoffed gesturing to the lazy town. 

Loki looks down in response, refusing to speak. Truth is, he wasn't anywhere close to happy. However, he wasn't about to prove his clod of a brother right. 

Thor picked him up under the arms and he almost collapsed against him. He'd been sitting for so long, he had a hard time controlling his legs to walk. Thor called Mjolnir and they set off towards New York.

 

Director Fury was none too happy that Thor had brought Loki to the headquarters, seeing as he had recently tried to take over New York and led the Chitauri there. "What the hell were you thinking?" he barked. 

"He has nowhere else to go, Director," he says. "He is here under my protection."

Loki looks like he wants to protest, but stays silent. His messy hair falling in front of his face as he looks down at his feet which were bloodied and raw from the shoes he had chosen to wear. His green tunic was dirty and ripped in several places due to constant use and wear. The old woman had given him a pair of sweatpants after he grew too thin to wear the leather ones he'd come to earth in.

"Then anything he does is on you," Fury snaps after looking over Loki's disheveled and vulnerable state. Thor nods in agreement before he leads Loki to an empty room that he could call his own.

The room itself was relatively small, but he supposes that they made it like that so no one is in their room for very long. It was completely white: the walls, the floor, the bedsheets, everything. The bed was shorter than Loki was, so his feet would hang off when he stretched out. There was a white nightstand next to the bed with two drawers and a wardrobe on the opposite side of the room.

"You will be happy here, Brother," Thor says assuredly. 

"That's doubtful" Loki mumbles as he shuts the door in Thor's face.


	3. Hey another Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Locryn gets drugs

It had been three years since Locryn had walked away from SHIELD, three years of avoiding any interaction with anyone associated with Director Fury. He never leaves his house and would much prefer the company of his python Gummy to the outside world where they would look at him as if he were something to be fixed.

Which to say, he probably does need to be fixed in a sense. The memories of what happened that night came by at random moments, or at least seemingly random. Places that he and Briar had gone and moments they shared brought an onslaught of memories that bombarded him with what feels like the weight of the world. He's plagued by nightmares of that night. Barely sleeping, it's a miracle that he hasn't collapsed out of exhaustion more than once.

He always does things in fives. He keeps track of how many times he washes his hands and at the end of the day, he washes his hands until that number is divisible by five. He wears exactly five bracelets and keeps five dollars in his pocket at all times. His apartment has forty-five books, five mirrors, five chairs at the table with five placeholders even though he refuses to have company.

Locryn was sitting on his couch searching the internet for a new hideaway log for Gummy. She sat contentedly on his shoulders sniffing the air as his eyes scanned the content of Amazon. He huffed in annoyance, "you're really hard to shop for you know that?"

A series of swift knocks, a set of five, echoed off the front door. Locryn grunts as he stands up. Looking through the peephole in the door, he groans before opening it just until the chained lock prevents it from opening further. "Director Fury, what an unpleasant surprise."

"Agent Nancarrow, you're looking feverish," he retorts. A blonde stranger with arms like tree trunks stands next to Fury. His long hair was restrained in a ponytail. He wore a denim jacket over a black nylon one with a pair of jeans.

"What do you want Fury," Locryn asks.

"We require your help young Locryn," the blonde man says, his voice deep and thunderous.

"Like I told Fury, I want to be left out of everything."

"I understand that, but I need help, and I am told that you would know what to do."

Locryn rolls his eyes and shuts the door to unlock it. He lets the chain fall limp and reopens the door. "You have two minutes."

Fury and the stranger file in followed by the Shadowman that usually sits outside Locryn's window at night making suggestive and ominous noises. He does his best to ignore the hallucination as he sits across the room from the two men.

"What do you need my help with?" he asks as his green eyes narrow.

"My brother has been staying at our headquarters for almost a month after I found him homeless in a small town in your Arizona. Since he has arrived, he has not left his room, nor will he speak to anyone. He barely sleeps, barely eats. I am worried for him, but I do not know how to help," the man Fury introduced as Thor, explains using his hands wildly during the entirety.

"And you think I do?" Locryn asks incredulously. The shadowman is now dancing suggestively against the wall behind the two men and he tries his best not to stare, but it is rather difficult when said hallucination is doing everything in its power to get your attention.

"Well obviously," Fury says before turning to glance at the wall behind him where Locryn's eyes are currently fixated before continuing, "you're currently doing the same thing, so maybe you two can bond over mutual misery."

"Yeah, I'll pass," Locryn says as he runs his hand through his unruly curls of red hair. His mother used to tell him that she loved his hair because it reminded her of a candle's flame, but after his dad left her for a younger woman, she told him time and time again how much she hated it since it looked so much like his dad's.

Fury wanders around the house while looking at the walls, seeing all the useless motivational posters Locryn's therapist suggest he put up.

"Please young agent, this is the only thing we know to do,” Thor pleaded. He looks visibly near tears.

“I said no. I’m not getting wrapped up in this shit again,” Locryn says. He begins removing the heavy coat he usually wears to hide his missing arm. “The last time I helped you greedy fucks, I lost my goddamn arm!”

“I did not want to have to force you, but you leave me no other choice Agent Nancarrow.” Because of the pole-dancing shadowman and arguing with Thor, Locryn failed to notice that Fury was now behind him. He felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck as Fury jabs a syringe full of a sedative into the flesh.

“You sick fucks,” he mutters as the effects begin taking effect almost immediately. As Locryn collapses, Thor manages to catch him while giving Fury a death glare.

“What too much? Was that too dramatic?”

  



	4. another chapter? Holy Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lots of insults

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skygge is pronounced Shigae  
> Myrkr is pronounce Meerker

Loki sat up to start his morning routine of sinking to the floor from his bed and staring off into the empty space on his wall regretting every major decision in his life, but stopped short when he noticed his surroundings were different. Instead of the usual mental-hospital white he had grown accustomed to, it was now a huge clear glass cell. One similar to the one that held him when he tried to take over New York, but much bigger. It also had several small furnishings including two dressers, two nightstands, and two beds.

He would have been okay with this if not for the other bed being occupied by a twitching human.

Scratch that, not human. Something else, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

Anger boiled up inside the growing pit of emptiness in his stomach. He wanted to scream, he wanted to punch things. Most of all, he wanted out of this damn cell. “Thor?! Thor you piece of Asgardian trash,” Loki begins before swearing in Norse. He shakes his fist at the camera in the corner of the room holding the circular cell.

“Hey Shadowman,” the stranger mumbles from underneath the mountain of blankets. “Can I get some sleep for one goddamn night?”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “Shadowman?”

“Look you dick, I will pay you cold hard cash to leave me alone for one whole night,” he says as he sits up. Red curls are plastered to his face with sweat. Freckles dominated his skin like stars in the sky and glistened like so due to the perspiration. Loki didn’t understand why he was sweating so much until the blankets fell away when the stranger scratched his chin. 

He was wearing a heavy winter coat. Similar to something common people would wear to Jotunheim.

The stranger yawns and stretches his back, reaching up with one arm.  He freezes when he sees Loki staring at him from the other side of the room. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

He crawls out of the blankets and walks up to the glass searching the room beyond. “Fury, you bitch-faced, one-eyed motherfucker,” he begins before also swearing in Norse. In more words, he calls Fury a donkey kissing, black wearing, trying too hard to be cool cock-juggling thunder-cunt. 

Loki has a look on his face that says he’s horrified and impressed at the same time. “How do you know Old Norse?”

Locryn turns and his face turns red. “I studied it?”

Loki looks at him dubiously and raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘okay, that sounds fake’

Locryn sighs. “I’m not from here. I’m from Myrkrheim.” he rubs his neck

“Myrkrheim?” Loki asks. He recalled reading about the dark realm when he was younger. It was home to those who could transform into literal shadows. They were called Skygge, and each one would manifest it’s shadow form when they reached a certain age. “So you’re a Skygge?”

Locryn flinches at the name, but nods silently. He finally gets a good look at his new roommate. His raven black hair fell to his shoulders and in front of the greenest eyes Locryn had ever seen. “Your eyes are the greenest green to ever green,” he says without stopping first to think before he speaks.

“Uh…” Loki pauses, trying to find something to say. “Thanks?”

Just then, Fury comes in followed by Thor. “Nice choice of profanity,” Fury says to Locryn who raises an eyebrow in response. “Thor translated.”

“Involuntarily,” Thor adds.

“Look, if I’m going to be stuck in here, can I at least have Gummy? I have papers on her saying she’s a therapy animal and that I need her,” Locryn says somewhat sheepishly, afraid of the others’ reaction.

“I’ll send Steve over to get the tank. Anything else you need from there?”

“Uh, maybe some clothes? My laptop maybe? The chinese in the fridge.” Loki raises an eyebrow. He had heard of people talking about chinese food while he had been living in Valia, but he had assumed it was code for something else.

“We can order you more chinese food,” Fury says.

“This is better cold and there’s no fridge in here to cool it down.” 

Fury rolls his eye and writes Locryn’s requests down on a piece of paper. “There’s a mini fridge in my bedroom that I keep Gummy’s food in. Bring that too since we’re not granted access to the kitchen at this point.”

“Is that all?”

Locryn nods and Fury leaves the room. 

Thor looks at both men in the cell. “We’ll release you both when we think you’re better.”

Locryn mumbles under his breath and turns back to his bed. “You know, you’re a lot taller in person,” he tells Loki whose face flushes at the compliment.


	5. I'm on a roll, here's another chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bonding over a snake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring a surprise visit from Gummy, who is an actual living snek

 

Locryn’s phone died two days ago, so he was being dramatic about how he couldn’t tell the time from under his blankets anymore, how he had to pop his head out to glance at the clock outside the cell. He had fallen asleep once more and complained that you could never tell when you were going to wake up when you took a nap. It’s been his third nap of the day and it was only one o’clock in the afternoon.

“Why do you sleep so much?” Loki asks the lump of blankets after closing his book. His eyes hurt and he needed something to do besides stare at a piece of paper all day.

“My brain shuts down when I’m in places like this,” Locryn mumbles just loud enough for Loki to hear outside the blankets. 

“Places like this?” he questions, “you’ve been imprisoned before?”

“Oh yeah, I used to be a hit man for a lot of money. Got thrown in jail quite a few times but was released every time due to lack of evidence.”

“Rise and shine kid, you’re pet...thing...is here,” a blonde man interrupts as he carries the massive tank into the cell. Locryn gets up faster than Tony does looking at the playboy magazine of himself and squeals like a five-year-old girl.

As he sets the tank down on the dresser, Locryn immediately opens the lid to the tank and gently pulls an almost full grown python out of the humid encasement. He coos and scritches underneath its chin. 

“Ew. No. Why,” the blonde man says.

Locryn smiles and makes kissy noises at the snake while the blonde man looks visibly uncomfortable. Another man, this one Locryn knew to which he groaned internally as the man walked into the cell carrying five duffle bags and set them on Locryn’s bed.

Tony Stark.

“You’re Enigma, aren’t you?” Tony asked. “I heard all about your mental breakdown. Good stuff.”

“It’s Locryn actually. I’m still not an agent,” he replies stroking the snake’s body while she sniffs the air and inches closer to where Loki is standing on the other side of the room.

Tony nods, “yeah, and yet you’re stuck here and we all get to be your therapist. So tell me kid, what’s on your mind? How are you feeling today?”

“What’s on my mind is I’m thinking about kicking your tincan ass,” Locryn retorts to which Loki snorts very unregally.

Tony is about to say something else, but the blonde man stops him, “Now’s really not the time to be a dick Tony.”

“Aw, c’mon Steve,” Tony whines. 

“Just go,” Steve says before Tony sulks out of the room. However, not before he slaps Steve’s ass and whistles. 

“Did you get the fogger?” Locryn asks Steve who promptly hands him one of the duffle bags that has the equipment for the tank inside. 

“Have fun with that kid,” he says before he leaves the cell as well.

“You forgot the fridge!” Locryn yells after him but immediately started crooning over the snake once more.

“Can I pet the snake?” Loki asks hesitantly.

“Actually, could you hold her for a second? I have to set up the equipment for the tank again since the bumbling oafs just stuffed it all in the bag.” Locryn suggests as he helps the snake onto Loki’s shoulders.

Loki looks visibly excited as he scritches underneath her chin. “What’s her name?”

“I call her Gummy, but it’s short for Jormungandr,” he explains as he gently pulls out the pieces of several different equipment sets. Gummy sniffs the air and wraps herself around his neck loosely as if she were a scarf. 

“You… named her after my son?”

“Yeah, she has that personality I guess,” Locryn says as he shrugs off the coat. He’s wearing a short sleeved t-shirt that has some band no one’s ever heard of on the front with tour dates from 2014 on the back. Loki stops mid snoot boop and stares. Locryn continues working on setting up the fogger since it had the least amount of pieces and they were easy to assemble.

“Your arm…” Loki broke the silence apologetically. “What happened?”

“My ex-girlfriend is a bedswerving cunt,” Locryn says as he uses his feet to hold the base down while he screws on the bottle. 

“You’ve adapted quite well,” Loki says lightly, trying to avoid insulting his cellmate because to be quite frank, Loki was sure Locryn could kick his ass.

“After three years, you learn you have to adapt. I’m just doing it poorly.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, I mean you’re doing that fine without help.”

“But what do I do when a weapon needs two hands, or if I need both hands for any intricate task? Hell, I haven’t done anything in the three years I’ve been without it.”

“Now that’s obviously not true.”

“I can’t even take care of myself dude,” Locryn says pausing to look up at Loki who is watching him assemble the next piece of the fogger. He tightens a piece and sets it up behind the tank on the dresser and plugs in into the wall. Fog starts emitting from the hose connecting to the base and he sighs a bit.

He pulls out two humidity gauges and two temperature gauges from the bag and replaces the four inside the tank. 

As Locryn finishes assembling the tank necessities, dinner arrives for the both of them.

A chicken patty with mashed potatoes and white gravy

 


	6. Loki does not know how to friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is overprotective

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, I'm really sorry

 

Locryn was still wheezing when Fury showed up, eyes blazing. “What in the glass-shattering fuck was that?!” He yells. His black cape fluttering behind him as he marches into the room containing the cell. Locryn jumps, startled by his booming voice and cringes. His brain automatically shuts off, pulling him into himself.

“Watch your tone,” Loki barks when he sees Locryn retreat into himself. He himself had done the same thing when Odin or the like would give him lectures, though that was mostly out of boredom. Locryn seemed to do it as a defense mechanism.

“Watch my tone my ass,” Fury retorts. “He threw a nurse ten feet! And then held both nurses at tentacle-point!”

“He did not see what was actually there!” Loki counters. “He saw the woman who caused him to lose an arm, not the pathetic nurse! He was doing it to protect himself from a threat he saw.” Loki gets up and walks to the wall of the cell. “If they had not scared him, he would not have reacted the way he did. If they had just talked to him, found out what triggers episodes and panic attacks, he would not have reacted the way he did!”

Fury points at Locryn who is more or less in a catatonic state. “I brought him in here to deal with you. I brought him to see if he could fix whatever the hell is wrong with  _you_.” The vein in his neck and forehead threatened to pop.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?!” Loki yells incredulously. “What’s wrong is I’ve never been treated like a person! I’ve been treated like a mistake and something that needed to be lied to and some  _thing_  that needed eggshells to be walked on in its presence!”

“Well that’s not my problem Princess,” Fury sneers. “He’s too much of a threat to be around anyone. He’s being moved to another cell.”

“Listen to me you one-eyed vargdropi,” Loki growls. “The only reason I am still here, is that Locryn needs someone to protect him from idiots like you. For once in my pathetic life, someone wants me to be here, and likes my company. I finally make a friend and you threaten to take him away after a single moment of vulnerability?!”

“He is a danger to everyone around him.”

“If you or anyone else steps foot in this cell with the intention of hurting Locryn, or taking him away unwillingly, I  _will_  kill everyone on this ship starting with you. And I promise it will hurt.”


	7. Separated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's mental health goes to shit

The shitty thing about migraines is that they make functioning normally very difficult. Loki’s head hurt like an icepick through the skull for a frontal lobotomy. It took several moments for him to open his eyes against the harsh white light of the room. He groaned and expected a similar groan in response from his cellmate, but heard nothing. Loki sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, yet the blurriness remained. He could vaguely make out a dresser and beyond that, a wall.

Obviously, this stops him in his tracks. 

He rubs his eyes again, and some of the blurriness recedes. He’s in a room, much like the one when he first arrived, except there was a giant glass pane window for guards to do routine checks. He was sitting on a lumpy, green plastic mattress with two blankets and a limp pillow that somehow resembled an old man’s lumpy breast. 

Anger boils beneath his skin, but instead of the usual hot flare of indignation, his blood ran cold. The temperature in the room dropped until he could see his breath. He felt the tan of his skin recede as the blue of his Jotun form took over. His vision turns red as he moves from the bed and stands at the glass.

“Fury, you better run and hide and hope to whatever god you believe in that I don’t know how to look under shit!” He shrieks as he punches the window pane. His hand blossoms in pain, but he doesn’t feel it as he picks up the nightstand and throws it across the room. It shatters pitifully against the glass as he crosses the room in two strides to reach the dresser, which is actually a pair of lockers bolted into the ground. Loki picks it up as if it weighed no more than a sack of potatoes and throws it at the glass too.

An alarm blares as he rips the blankets from the mattress and then grabs the lumpy mattress before tossing it uselessly at the glass. Loki secures his fingers underneath the metal of the bed and rips it from the floor before tossing  _ that _ at the window.

Tears pool in his eyes as the tan of his skin takes over once more. His red eyes return to their normal green and he slumps against the wall in defeat.

They had taken the one thing that made him feel normal.

 

Locryn’s brain felt like someone had stuffed it in a jar, shook up the contents, and stuffed it back inside his skull. He opened his eyes, but he felt like he was still dreaming. Thoughts swam in front of his eyes like clouds moved across the sky. He wanted to sit up, to banish the swirling thoughts away, but he was tied down with straps across his stomach, wrists, and ankles. Panic set in on top of the dreaminess.

Someone walks into the room that he’s being held in and stares at the monitor oh so kindly beeping in Locryn’s ears. They wrote down a few things and then inserted a needle into the intravenous tube and injected whatever was inside into his veins. Sleep threatened to take ahold of Locryn once more. He struggled with it until the arms of sleep suffocated him.

 

It’s been a week and the only time Loki moves from his spot in the corner of the room is to get whatever slop they’re feeding him and to use the bathroom which turned out to be nothing more than a metal sink with a toilet connected to it. He refused to acknowledge the visitors that came to see him. It was mainly Thor who insisted that he speak to him. That somehow that oaf could help him.

He spends his days like he did before: staring at a wall, contemplating every little thing he’d ever done wrong in his entire life. He played scenarios where he followed orders more closely, where he tried harder to be the son Odin wanted. 

More recently, it was of Locryn. Try as he might, the friend he’d made in confinement crossed his mind more frequently than the mistakes of his past. The voices in his head that he had control of started getting louder and more unrestrained. They whispered and pointed out mistakes Loki wanted to forget. 

All in all, his well being was being flushed down the drain.


End file.
